A random flight through some of my extraordinary flying adventures

Monday Morning Inspiration

Sally Ride was born on May 26th, 1951 in Encino, CA. Older of two daughters, her interest in science grew at an early age. She went on to get a bachelor of science in Physics, a bachelor of arts in English, a master of science and a PhD in physics from Stanford University.

When NASA was looking for woman astronaut candidates in 1977, Sally Ride was one of the six women selected. She became the first American woman in space when she flew aboard Space Shuttle Challenger on June 18th, 1983.

She made two shuttle flights, and later became a champion for science education and a role model for generations. She wrote five science related children’s books and co-founded, Sally Ride Science, to encourage children, especially girls, to study science.

Suzanne Asbury-Oliver is the only professional female skywriter in the world. She started flying gliders when she was only 14, soloing at 15 and by the time she was 18, she was a Certified Flight Instructor.

She has been skywriting the skies of United States and Canada for Pepsi Cola Company since 1980. In fact, she met her husband Steve Oliver at the Kentucky Derby while she was skywriting for Pepsi and he was banner towing advertisements in his 1941 Stearman. She and her husband own their own plane and skywriting business called Olivers Flying Circus.

Blanche Scott was the first women to drive across the United States and the first women to fly.

Born in 1889, Blanche Scott’s life spanned from the era of airplane invention, to seeing the first man walk on the moon. In an age when women couldn’t vote and their place was considered to be at home, she became the first woman to drive across the US. There were only 218 miles of roads outside the cities.

Like this:

When she opened her eyes, she saw sunlight, green leaves, and a man’s face.

She thought: I know what this is.

This was the world she had expected to see it at sixteen.– and now she had reached it– and it seemed so simple, so unastonishing, that the thing she felt was like a blessing pronounced upon the universe by means of three words:

But of course.

She was looking up at the face of a man who knelt by her side, and she knew that in all the years behind her, this was what she would have given her life to see: a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt.